Big Bad Mercury

In the summer of 1969, Eddie Wood was about to enter his senior year of high school and he needed a new set of wheels. Lucky for him, his father, Glen Wood of the famous Wood Brothers NASCAR racing team, owned a Lincoln-Mercury dealership in Danville, Virginia.

At the top of Eddie’s wish list was a midsized Mercury—a ’70 Cyclone Spoiler powered by a Boss 429. After all, Ford homologated this big-block for stock car racing, and the Wood Brothers ran this new hemi-head engine, not a wedge, in NASCAR.

The Wood Brothers surely had big-time pull with Ford and Mercury. This family had raced NASCAR since 1950, starting out with a ’38 Ford.

“We’ve never raced anything but Fords and Mercurys,” Eddie says. So whatever Eddie wanted for his new car, one thing was certain: “I was gonna have a Ford.”

A Boss 429 Cyclone would have been a dream ride, especially for a hot rod kid going to NASCAR races and working on David Pearson’s stock car. But Bunkie Knudsen, president of Ford, wanted an image boost for the Mustang to match the likes of the Camaro ZL1 and Hemi ’Cuda. Eddie didn’t get his Boss 429 Cyclone Spoiler, even though the factory order form provided a box for this option.

“There was some kind of a hold on it,” Eddie says, his voice reflecting discouragement even today.

Ford put a permanent kibosh on this order. The Boss 429 was available only in a Mustang. The teenager settled for a Cougar Eliminator with a Boss 302, painted Competition Orange with a black interior, the same trim he had ordered for the ’70 Cyclone Spoiler. Now he had a lighter, hotter ponycar.

As it turned out, Eddie “got in quite a bit of trouble” with the Cougar. He remembers “a couple, three speeding tickets,” and eventually he blew up the high-winding, race-bred Boss motor.

“I think it was against a 383 Super Bee,” he says. “We kind of pulled off together. I pulled that thing back in high gear and it blew up just like it was on a racetrack. I mean it blew up big time.”

The high school senior had to call his dad to come tow the car. With shoe polish smeared “all over the windows from the dragstrip, I was pretty guilty looking,” says Eddie.

Actually, Eddie had not raced the car at the track. He did “have it classed to see what I would have to run against.” To Glen Wood, drag racing “was kind of a taboo thing,” Eddie says.

While riding in the hauler as they towed the Cougar home, Eddie had a conversation with his father.

“That was a Sunday afternoon in the dead of winter. He says, ‘Well, we’ll get the thing back together and figure out what to do. You need to get a bigger car and something with an automatic. You ought to get a Cyclone.’”

Fine With Me

A Cyclone was “fine with me,” Eddie says. He ordered one as soon as he was able to. Once again, he checked off Competition Orange with a black interior. Even though the transmission was a C6 automatic, Eddie ordered the hottest engine available, the 429 Cobra Jet. The 351 was the base engine in the Spoiler. Mercury did not offer the Drag Pack in ’71, which made a 429 CJ into a Super Cobra Jet, most likely an immense relief to Glen.

“I never got in any trouble with that car, but I did drive it a lot,” he says.

Eddie left the automatic alone at first and just drove the beautiful beast. Once “the college thing” was over “it was time to do the complete hop-up.”

Eddie, then 21 years old, had the resources to build a really hot Mercury. He sent the motor to Holman-Moody, the same shop that built the Wood Brothers’ NASCAR racing engines, to have it blueprinted. At the family shop Eddie’s uncle Leonard found a pair of four-barrel Holley “center squirters” off a 427 Tunnel Port originally run in NASCAR circa 1967-1968.

Eddie got a new hood and cut a hole to clear the two fours, covered with a box. Leonard made a “nice little scoop” by bending and splitting two pieces of tubing. The scoop was “probably 4 inches tall” and painted orange.

With a big cam, the automatic transmission lacked vacuum to work properly. Eddie went to his father’s dealership and ordered “every piece it took” to install a four-speed, right down to the shift boot to look factory. However, he chose a Hurst shifter and a Top Loader out of a family racecar, most likely a David Pearson–driven Mercury.

The stock 9-inch had an open differential and 3.25 gears. Eddie swapped the diff for a limited slip and a Wood Brothers racing 3.50 gearset. Those gears are apparently still in the car, as are the shifter and transmission.

Eddie sold the Spoiler in the mid ’70s. He recalls, “A guy in Danville bought it for his kid, then sold it. I think it sat in a warehouse for 10 years. Then one day out of the blue this gentleman [named McPherson] calls me from Baltimore.”

Collectors like to know the heritage of their cars. Was this the Cyclone Spoiler Eddie bought new?

Eddie says, “I told him to go to the left side of the steering wheel and look under the dash for a couple toggle switches. Sure enough, they were there.”

What were the toggle switches for?

“To cut the taillights off, the brake lights,” he explains. “You know, if you’ve got a situation that you need to do that.”

McPherson had the Spoiler restored and eventually sold it to a man in the Milwaukee area. The current owner, John Grafelman, bought the car next.

Shinoda Connection

Readers may recall the “Long-Lost Boss” story (June ’11) about the Larry Shinoda Boss 302 prototype found in a barn in Illinois. John bought that car in 1976 as a ’69 428 Cobra Jet Mustang fastback and a few years ago traced the heritage back to Shinoda, the famous automotive designer. John also found a Shinoda connection in the Cyclone Spoiler. Apparently, before Shinoda left Ford Design, he applied his immense talents to the front end of Mercury’s Cyclone Spoiler.

“Larry designed that bullet nose,” says John. “I found that out last year. I knew Larry did the spoiler, but Larry designed the whole front end of the car and the grille assembly.”

John credits this information to a close friend of Shinoda who was a show car judge at a big muscle car event last year. (He has lost track of his name.) The most interesting part of the design is the round hole in the center of the grille. Larry was a hot rodder and a drag racer in his early days, and his idea was to make a grille to help out his buddies working on their cars at the dragstrip. Shinoda’s grille design allows them to pull out a camshaft right through the center hole.

John Grafelman isn’t likely to be swapping cams. Mostly, he shows his big bad Mercury. It was a standout among the aero warriors at last year’s Forge Invitational, where we captured his blazing orange Cyclone in the late afternoon sun.

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